26th Century Boy
by aberrantstrain
Summary: Howard/Vince. Rated for alcohol/possible drug use, foul language and eventual Sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

I was thinking about that time when you came home from Lester's and found me all pissed, just destroyed, do you remember?

'I'm gone,' I'd told you.

You snorted and rolled your eyes at me. 'Yeah, on a bender.'

You might not believe it, but in the drunk times, I was on another level, sliding in and out of myself somehow and existing simultaneously in multiple dimensions like Brian Eno. It was cosmic. I sailed away on an ocean of tequila and then shipwrecked in a pile of glitter and sequins and fake fur, propped up in the corner like an art project in progress left off half-way, hot-glue gun oozing plastic lava onto a stack of magazines.

Fussing about fire hazards, your hands were cool like hipster kids and chilling to my skin like a kind of premonition, but willing to unzip my fuck-up boots for me and dis-tangle my jewelry from where it had choked up all about my throat.

I could feel the hard reprimanding you wanted to give me coming on like a big gnarly erection but something held you off, maybe the empty bottle rolling around beneath your feet and the feeling that you'd seen some part of me that maybe you weren't supposed to see. Which is silly.

'Let's put you to bed,' you said. Watch the walls. Easy now, Sonny jim.

My drunk braincell wanted me to kiss you but I didn't as you helped get me out of my Ziggy suit, bravely facing the intoxicated confusion of my nakedness without a second glance, like a soldier to war, you were, guiding my stumbling feet and slamming shoulders.

You got me up and put me down again in your own bed, though you knew I might be sick, suspected it though I wasn't. Wouldn't be. You left a tiny, tidy rubbish bin by the bedside just in case. There was toast that I couldn't eat and tea I couldn't drink and a grown-up sigh waiting for me beneath the fringe of your mustache like a bad, ugly gift that nobody wants.

Don't be mad, I tried to say, but I think it came out wrong, a sloppy mess of syllables slurring around in my mouth. It's just as well, because I only would have told you how much I wished my first sexual experience had been in a bathroom cubicle, but really it was in a closet that had a window. Now that I think on it, a window is actually a really detrimental feature for a closet to have.

The next afternoon I lay alone in your bed in our room with my head pounding itself like a drum and thought about how great it would be to live in a teepee, or an igloo.

Once I knew this lion who told me a story about how he'd fallen in love with an uppity snow leopard. How they met or what he was doing in such a harsh environment I don't recall, but they lived together in an igloo for six months and the Lion said it was all just lovely. They spent their days writing poetry and hunting the frozen wastes, but eventually the snow leopard separated from the lion because of 'general differences'.

'I don't have a problem with you, I have a problem with me,' The snow leopard had told the lion, but the lion got the feeling that the only real problem the snow leopard had with itself was that it was dating the lion. The lion had been a terrible hunter because he was all yellow and bronze with caramel highlights, a coloring meant for a hot, sun-baked landscape and not the sparse and snowy mountains.  
The lion suspected that this had been part of the reason the snow leopard was ashamed to be seen with him, and also that the snow leopard had hated his poetry.

The lion had never really gotten over the snow leopard, and ever after, he only wrote sad prose about white, spotty fur and snow flakes and nothing else. It was all very tragic, and a waste of perfectly good talent.

In a haze I drifted with this in mind, watching on the sidelines of myself as a battle between the slow spinning of the room and the stationary stillness of my center of gravity played out.  
My body was heavy like a stone sinking in the blanket waters of your bed.

I slept without knowing I was asleep and dreamed the whole meaning of my own life. Then, when I woke up later, I found that all of it had been real the entire time. Can you believe it?

I felt strange; displaced and dehydrated, time-warped from too much sleep, a whole day lost. Fuck. I wanted to ask you why you never came to bed, but I didn't get around to it.

'This might be the worst hangover I've ever had,' I told you when I finally got up, fumbling with my flowery bathrobe, hands caught up around a cold cup of tea, that same one you made for me the night before. I left the soggy toast to it's own by your bed, though, and steadied myself against the wall, ready for the lecture I knew you had prepared.

'Well, we get what we deserve, don't we? The next time you decide to drink a bottle of tequila, Vince, you might want to think about eating some real food before.' So smug, you were!

'Licking the cherry filling out of a Hostess pie and having a packet of crisps doesn't really cut things, does it? And I won't even mention the fact that you left the hot-glue on. You could have started a fire! And after the Nicky Clarke scar, I'd thought you'd learned!'

You looked at me and I looked at you. 'Don't you have anything to say?' You asked me.

'It was all well fun and thanks for putting me to bed?' I offered.

You looked disappointed and I felt stupid because I couldn't understand why.

I think maybe the reason I remember this all so well is because that was the night before I went to That Party with Leroy, and I remember everything about That Party.

That Party was well crazy, complete insanity.

That Party was the kind of party that becomes legend in the minds of all who attended. Lives were changed, destinies were claimed. If you were at That Party, it was because the fates themselves demanded it.

That was the party where I lost my left boot and found it in the garden outside being covetously snuggled by a bearded lady dressed as a nun who was tripping on two tabs. She told me she'd never seen anything as beautiful in her life as my left shoe.  
After finally getting the bearded lady sorted I went inside to find Leroy pissed and departing in the company of a transvestite dwarf. Later, a woman climbed up on the table and did a kind demonstration with some ping-pong balls that honestly, I think might have put me off women for awhile.

I always wanted to ask Leroy about his cross-dressing dwarf adventure, but I suspect it might not have gone very well because he's been a bit sensitive about that whole weekend since.

I know you don't like to hear about it, Howard, but really, That Party was magical. Even the bad, horrifying parts were amazing. Not like you've forgotten, you had to drive all the way to Scotland to get me by the end of it.

Tonight there aren't any parties, just you and me and maybe the moon, high and bright and full above us like a miracle of light in the sky.

The flat is quiet and cluttered and comfortable looking with my eyes closed half way, strings of lights and mismatched furniture smashing together in the blurry line of my sight.

I've disappeared in to the sofa with only a pad of paper and a pen to save me from the horrible, long-winded thing about ice mummies that you're watching. Normally, I would never subject myself to something as mind-numbingly boring as this, but you asked me to stay in and for once, I wanted to. The rain outside combined with the lure of Chinese take-away was too much for me.

Lately I've been writing love songs that seem to confuse and upset you- your eyebrows knit together under your lazy hair and your hands flail helplessly, searching for some kind of explanation about where I'm coming up with all of this, and who it might be about.

You think they're about someone else and I don't bother correcting you because I like seeing you all jealous and speculative, but I worry about the artistic corner I've backed myself in to. Eventually, I'll have to tell you that the real truth is that they're all about you in one way or another; A star-chart heart, map of the heavens for you to navigate like an intergalactic cartographer in an alien landscape.

My life with you has always been like a song, but now I want a symphony.

It started when we played that show out of town, when I wore my birdfaced beak-mask and my furry platforms and you drank too much after the set and told me that I looked like a nightmare disco plague doctor gone wrong but that you'd still have a go. I think you thought I was upset, but I thought that was the best thing anyone had said to me in ages.

Everyone kept coming up to me all night, telling me about how my creepy boyfriend had gone and hit on some poor girl, frightening her half to death with his jazz-fusion talk and choking her with the stifling smell of old library books, pot smoke, armpits and shaman incense.

Later, when we were going home drunk on the bus, you slumped over in the seat like a sack of rice and told me that I was the only person that you felt like ever really loved you.

'What about your Mum and Dad? They love you!'

'That, sir, is a terrible example,' You told me. 'My parents don't even like me! And everyone knows, Vince, that parents only really love you because they have to. I'm sure if I'd been someone else they would have taken to me a bit more.'

'I love your Mum,' I told you.

'Yeah, and she loves you, too, but that's exactly what I mean- You're someone else. And beyond that, everyone loves you, so it doesn't count,' you accused. 'Irresistible, you are. Like a puppy. You've got the big eyes.'

I couldn't argue with that one, but I still felt badly for you. 'Don't worry about that girl, Howard. You're letting one incident color your broader perspective. In a week, nobody's going to remember,' I promised, though it wasn't really my place to.

'I should just give up,' you told me. I sat forward and clutched your arm.

'Oh, no, Howard. Not this! You aren't going to try to kill yourself, are you?'

You looked at me sharply with your tiny eyes, pretending to be offended before you sighed and let your shoulders relax.

'No,' you said. 'Not today.' You paused then, and smiled a little smile like your mind was settling distantly on something else. 'I just mean, if there were a perfect woman for me, Vince, it would be you.'

'But I'm not a woman,' I told you.

'My Mum thinks you are.' You said, sighing.

'But I'm not!' I said again.

'Just a detail, sir. S'just a minor detail.'

I looked at you, dismayed. 'Hardly minor! It's a major detail, it is.'

'All right. A well-sized, masculine detail.' You corrected yourself.

'What about a giant, sparkly, intergalactic detail?' I asked hopefully.

You smiled in spite of your bad mood and let yourself lean in to me a little when the bus went round the corner.


	2. Chapter 2

After that, the whole thing was sort of hard to get out of my head. Probably because it had always been there, slinking around unnoticed like a shifty shoplifter or a pedo round a school yard.

I say that's when it all started, but that's a kind of lie. I'm not sure if there was any one instant that was the actual beginning.

Instead, it was more like a collection of occasions through out time had all been piling up in my head, and then were suddenly put in to a context I could understand. I can't say it how I mean it properly-

It's just like when you have a favorite jacket and you wear it all the time but eventually you get used to it and it becomes a bit drab so you find something else and put the first jacket away, but the second jacket isn't ever quite as good and then you dig the first one out again and wonder why you stopped wearing it to begin with. You know? Well, I reckon you don't.

But it's like that.

I didn't want to think of it as much as I did. I don't know what happened. It was like a scab; you pick at it even when you know you shouldn't.

I was sick over the thought of you and I, but hungry for it, too.

When you go to Jazzercise class I look through my photo albums, trying to see my life the way someone who wasn't me would see it. Who is this person that I just happen to be?

The different weight and hairstyle me's all smile up from their places beneath the thick, glossy plastic of their protective pages, standing next to different weight and hairstyle you's. We're in the snow, by the seaside, on the side stair of the Nabootique. In the kitchen, my arms tangled together with yours.

If I were someone else and not myself, I would wonder who the tall, weedy mustached man was to the owner of these albums. Were they friends? Childhood mates?

Or lovers swimming together between the covers in the middle of the night, bedroom blue like an ocean of private moments, just waiting to wash up on the shores of one another's skin? I hold my breath like I'm underwater and make wishes on eyelashes and aeroplanes and girls with really great outfits, just hoping we'll be like that someday.

We get pretty close, sometimes.

Like that time when I scratched some of the varnish off my thumbnail and the scratched away bits ended up looking just like a buffalo standing on top a mesa. That was amazing.

You were working very hard at ignoring me, checking tallies off a list and counting stock on your fingers as you sat behind the counter, awash in the sallow green glow of the back-light like an emerald absinthe bath.

'Howard, check it out.'

You said you didn't care but then when I forced you to look, you sat staring at my thumb for ages, just contemplating it. I loved you so much then that I was like a little ant with a great big crumb- the feeling was so much bigger than the person carrying it around.

I wasn't even bored, standing close enough to you to smell you, familiar soap scent mixed up with a tangy twist of sweat and the musty, antiquated waft of wool from your jumper, peering with you at the accidental thumbnail buffalo, so majestic on its rocky outcrop of black sparkly paint. There was a bit down in the corner, half picked away on accident that implied distant hills and cacti.

'This is the most inspiring thing I've seen in months,' You told me. I could taste your coffee breath on my lips like we'd been kissing.

'Yeah?' I asked you. My smile ran over like water out of my full bath-tub face. You finally let go of my hand and sat back with a sigh.

'You know, sometimes in life I feel as if it's the tiniest details that encompass the broadest of human experiences. Like everything is a microcosm of the larger environment it comes from.'

I felt my right eyebrow migrate towards my hairline in amusement. 'You feel all that off a painted nail?'

'Sure,' You sniffed. 'It's my responsibility as an artist to reflect on the world at large, Vince.'

'I feel that way about shoes,' I told you.

'Yeah, that's not exactly the same in any way, is it?' You asked me, crossing your arms. I leaned in towards you, elbows on the counter.

'Course it is. In the right pair of shoes, anything is possible. Especially the really amazing ones- you've got a responsibility to wear them. And when you do, all the mysteries of the universe are suddenly within your grasp,' I stood at my tallest and pointed to my silvery boots.

'Cosmic micros and all!'

'Not a real thing, what you just said.' You pointed out to me.

'You know what your problem is, Howard,' I told you. 'Your problem is you're suffering from shoe-transference of responsibility.'

You gave me a dull, unreceptive look.

'I read all about it in 'Cheekbone', I explained. 'People with low self-image don't feel worthy of having beautiful shoes, yeah? So in their heads, the responsibility of wearing them gets passed on to someone else. It's well serious, a real affliction.'

You opened your mouth to protest and then stopped, looking down at the lumpy, functional shoes like two baked potatos that covered your white socks and hid your curly toes. I could see you turning it over in your mind.

'..No,' you concluded finally, shaking your head. 'I think you're mistaken, sir. You're so confused by that trash rag of yours that you can't distinguish between genuine taste and mental illness.' You shot a suspicious look towards my copy of 'Cheekbone.'

Later, I walked in on you reading it secretly before bed. You thought I didn't notice you stuffing it away behind your pillow, but I did.

The ironic bit was that I'd always thought to myself how easy things would be if I did fancy you, but now that I'd started to feel it, everything seemed much more complex and important than I'd imagined it would.

I felt guilty when I thought back on how much I'd liked imagining you behind me, or remembered how hard I'd come, standing under the hot water, sucking my own wet lips and fingertips, hiding behind the hair plastering itself over my face while I touched myself to visions of you emblazoned across the insides of my eyelids.

I wondered: Did the bath know who you thought of when you tossed off? I leaned against the slick shower wall and tried to ask it, searching for the residue of your secrets like some kind of invisible record left in the tile grout.

We were together all the time, and not together at all. And If I wasn't with you I was thinking of you, which is pretty much the same thing, yeah?

I'm not sure how it got to be there, but eventually I saw that there was this picture of my life in my mind, a sleek advert for how everything could be, with you right there in the middle like a big bottle of freaky Howard cologne.

But what was I to do? It made me confused and uncomfortable at breakfast and in the shop all day with you, and especially in our room at night times.

I didn't know what to do with myself as it was, drawing migrating herds of brontosaurus in green and black crayola across the back of your inventory papers when you weren't looking or dis-arranging your jazz records behind your back.

Sitting behind the counter on a Monday afternoon, cutting up old magazines from the 50's. I make housewife monsters, drawing on Jackal heads and tentacle arms that hover and loom scribbly over their aproned black and white print bodies while you fuck about in Stationery Village with a tiny smile on your face.

I wanted that smile all for myself and felt greedy for thinking of ways I could get it and keep it like a glow bug in a jar.

It was easier for me to stay out late than stay home with you at night, because if I was out late I could keep away the nervous feeling that came over me when the sun went down. It wasn't that anything was wrong- really, things were pretty good in general, but my guts still tangled up like a set of cheap extensions every night before bed.

Coming in after you'd already gone to sleep worked like a charm for a while, but I didn't like having to wait so late to come home and I missed our midnight crimps and how you make my tea exactly as I like it and the comforting feeling of being in our room together, just me and you all by our lonesome. You made me feel like we were the only ones awake in the entire world.

It was terrible having to climb in to my own cold bed every night, piled high like a mountain made from coats and shoes and neglected sweet wrappers. I'd crawl in to the mess and try to curl up, burrowed in like a tiny creature, but I'd still find myself lying lonesome on all the sharpest points of my skeleton.

So, eventually I just started getting in to bed with you when I came home.

First off I thought I was being well sly, but then later I realized I'd been giving myself away the whole time by doing it. I hadn't meant for it to work out the way it did, but I reckon it became a way of telling you the truth without me having to say anything.

I didn't know how it would go over, but I couldn't stand not knowing, either. I couldn't just come right out and say everything, though sometimes I wanted to. In a way, I was afraid of what might happen if I did. I'd seen you hopeless and obsessed, not having slept for days on end and mumbling deliriously about cream things. Would you go wrong over me, too, if I told you how I felt?

Still, I loved being woken up mid-mornings by the feel of your arm sliding out from around me as you got up, my smell in the sheets lingering with yours. I let myself drift back into oblivion, carried away by the sleepy shuffling sound of your slippered feet filing away into the bathroom.

The only thing you said to me about the bed piracy was could I please use my own pillow because I was getting drool all on your extra one and to try not to be such a terrible blanket thief. 'It's more than large enough for two people if one of them isn't twisting himself up like a breakfast burrito.'

Maybe in hindsight, that should have been my first clue that you didn't mind so much- Silence is a form of submission and all that, but mostly I was disappointed that I didn't get more of a reaction out of you, and maybe also secretly relieved that you were going to let me get away with it quietly. I was breaking your rules, after all, but you were breaking them, too.

I might not have been able to touch you officially during the daytime, but I liked knowing that in your sleep, you didn't mind and touched me back.


	3. Chapter 3

It was an end of summer Sunday and you were making dinner.

There was a reason why but I don't remember what it was now. I only remember you standing over the stove in a pinny with cookbooks open telling me not to be too long and to not get too pissed because it was important to you.

Outside the sun was setting, the end of day draped in a neon spray of pinks and oranges like a vintage Valentino jacket, gilting the edges of the stormy purple clouds which dashed across the sky, theatening rain.

'When the mini-quiches are cooled, it'll only be another hour or so before the bread rises. Then I'll just throw that in and it'll all be ready. Lester might even pop by, say Hello,' You were saying. It was all quite fancy sounding, and really, I was excited, though not for Lester. Just for dinner. And you.

But first I was going round to Leroy's for a drink and to check out some of the new videos he'd got ('Vampire Goth Babes do Texas' but I didn't tell you that). I was lingering, hanging around the kitchen, sneaking little bits of tomato or olive out of the Make-Your-Own-Salad station that you'd set up and sticking my fingers in the mango-mint chutney. You wouldn't admit out-right that you'd made it just for me, but I'm the only one in the flat that likes it.

'You, sir, are going to be in a world of pain if you don't stop that,' You threatened, shoo-ing me away with your arms from all the little tasty things so nicely sliced and put into their own personal blowls sitting on the counter. You were in a good mood and I liked pestering you because you didn't take it so seriously as you did when you were being a moody twat.

'Is that so?' I asked you, grinning around a mouthful of dried cranberry. I stole one last olive and stuck it on the tip of my little finger before I ate it.

'I will come at you like a hurricane of knees, teeth and elbows.' You set a little bowl of crumbly cheese in front of me. I reached to get a bit, but you knocked my hand away and smiled.

'Don't you have somewhere to be?' You asked me pointedly, raising an eyebrow.

As I was going down the stair, you told me to be back by nine.

Of course, When I got to Leroy's the party was in full swing. 'Vampire Goth Babes do Texas' flickered silently, projected large on a white wall while people milled around watching it and admiring one another.

As soon as I got in the door, a terrifying ginger girl dressed as Jackie Kennedy in an ill-fitting brown wig handed me a cocktail in a black paper cup with gold stars stuck on. As I took a big drink, I noticed she had fake brains slopped all over her pink immitation-Chanel suit and a smile just like a gun shot wound.

When I was done with my drink, someone took my cup away and gave me another. Gin and tonic, I think, from the taste.

'There's LSD in the black cups, mate,' Leroy told me later.

'What? Why didn't you tell me before? I've got to be home in an hour!'

I was on my fourth and I'd already begun to feel a little drunk and strange, like each individual hair on my body had a personality and wanted my attention. Leroy patted me on the back comfortingly without being comforting at all and shambled away, pissed like a village vicar.

'Vampire Goth Babes do Texas' was a bloodbath soundtrack to my bad news splashed across the wall, a mess of tits and fangs and cowboy boots and cut up denim flashing luridly. The churning vintage Texas Chainsaw Massacre colors felt sick and wasted and I didn't like it.

'Fuck.'

The carpet beneath my feet had become a series of crawling patterns, inching away from me but going nowhere at the same time. The landscape of the room changed and became more of an idea than a place. I could have sworn that the potted plant in the corner was making leafy passes at me and lights that weren't really there twinkled and winked at me like phantoms from the corners of my eyes. The flourescent lights left smudges of shadow under everyone's eyes and carved out dark places in the hollows of people's cheeks.

When I sat down I felt uncomfortable, but when I stood up I only wanted to sit down again. I kept reminding myself that I was fine, that I'd done this before and that everything was all right, even if it hadn't been my choice just then.

I licked at my bottom teeth to avoid the crazy clench of my jaw and pressed my tongue flat against the roof of my mouth, twisting my fingers together like a christmas bow.

Feeling the delicate ridges of my pallate, I became aware of the shape of my skull, a house for my brain all covered in flesh, and aware of the fact that I was feeling my own skull from the inside out.

My head was sitting at the top of my spine like the upper most beast on a totem pole, stacked vertebre cascading down in a column of bones that led to the very center of me, a meat machine, a human mess of blood and testicles and teeth contained neatly in a skin sack, walking around and saying things. Christ.

I had to escape. I felt like if I left, my strange thoughts would stay behind, floating on the air though the brain that thought them up was gone.

It took me a long time to leave, though. Every time I'd start to go, someone would stop me and try to start a conversation, and for a minute I'd feel all right, but I couldn't concentrate on much of anything for very long because I could only think about how bad it was of me that I was frying my balls off when I needed to go home and be straight and eat dinner with you.

It was all well stressful, especially after I'd noticed that not everyone had black cups with gold stars stuck on.

The last straw for me was when I realized that we were all shut up tight together in Leroy's teensy flat, breathing each other's air over and over and over again. The idea of so many lungs recycling eachother's breath made my empty tummy bubble, boiling with gin and tonic and candy and chemicals.

It was get-out-or-freak-out, so without saying goodbye I slipped toward the door, down the stairs and into the street below.

I felt better outside, like someone had turned on the lights even though it was night-time. The moon was waiting for me with a wink and a smile, alabaster retard lamp of my glitter rock heavens so divine.

When I finally wandered back to the Nabootique it was almost two. I was still high, but not caught up in the gruesome voodoo of Leroy's party. The lights were mostly out and Lester had gone. Dinner was over, packed up and put away in plastic containers neatly stacked.

The washed dishes drying on the counter beside the friendly lemon yellow tea towel were a small reminder of the real world and suddenly my guilt was crushing. A real weight on me.

I stood at the top of the stair and thought about how you'd made mango-mint chutney especially for me, and what had I done? I'd gone to a fry party on accident and come home with acid in my spine.

I found you in our room, sitting on the edge of your bed waiting for me.

'Howard..' I started, but you shook your head.

I sat down beside you, silenced, grinding my teeth and trying to get my words together.

When you looked at me, you seemed sad. It would have been so much better if you'd just been angry like usual, because then maybe I wouldnt've felt so bad.

'..Howard, I'm sorry I missed dinner. But it wasn't my fault this time!'

You looked disgusted and I stammered on. 'I really did want to come back at nine, I just got so high, Howard,' I trailed off, losing myself, losing myself more, and you looked at me expectantly.

I swallowed. '..So high that I lost myself. I couldn't get out of there. I was like a mouse in a maze with no little cheese at the other end.'

'High? High on what? Vince, What the hell is wrong with you?' You demanded to know, glaring at me.

I didn't know if you meant in general or specifically, so I started from the beginning and you listened to my story grimly while the wall behind you breathed and undulated gently. I wanted to touch it, but instead I put my hand on your knee.

You felt good to my fingers, reassuring in your solidity, but you were peering at me unhappily, saying that you couldn't believe I'd just accept drinks from strangers and how irresponsible I am, and all that kind of thing.

'Don't you realize how incredibly dangerous recreational drug use can be?'

'Don't look at me like that,' I told you. 'I feel well awful about it.'

You sighed and looked away, rubbing your face tiredly. 'Your pupils are the size of saucers.' You scolded.

'Yeah, and your mustache looks like a push-broom, so?'

You sat up with me all night that night, even though you were tired and irritated with me, even though I'd disappointed you. I think you were afraid I'd try to jump out the window and fly or some other fuckin nonsense but mostly I just ate things from the salad leftovers and drew pictures of sturgeon surgeons and fire stations on fire.

The sun was coming up by the time I'd finally started to come down. You pulled down the shade to shut out the day and undressed by my side like we did this all the time. I stood in my pants and watched you carefully folding your shirt over the back of the chair before you slid into bed, with me right behind you.

You huffed in the quiet when I clicked off the bed-side light and the darkness lit up my acid eyes. I imagined all the things I knew you wanted to say to me filling up the space between us. They floated there before my eyes, colorful bubbles in the undersea daytime bedroom darkness.

With your back turned, your shoulders felt like a fortress. You were closed off to me, shut away and cold.

'You're the miracle bone of my star heart,' I told you. 'You peel back the layers of my sweet onion self and know the real taste of me.'

'Not real, what you just said.' You mumbled grumpily. I did notice though, that you did a scoot closer to me after that.


End file.
